More about my mother

The big resolution of the last thing that was happening with my mother (back in July) was that she was admitted to hospice.

(It was digestion related. Enough said.)

That sounds dramatic, but it initially did not seem so. She was having this one issue, and it was at a time when there were some staffing changes at the facility, and it just seemed like a good way to get her some extra attention.

Note: there may have been some denial in my reasoning, because there was another thing going on.

She was on an anticoagulant that builds up in your blood, so requires regular monitoring of the levels. That is the INR test. I had been the one taking the measurements because the pandemic had made other options unnecessarily difficult. Besides, I do finger sticks for my blood sugar all the time; it's not that different.

The INR requires a slightly larger drop of blood, about the size of a ladybug. The real test is how long it takes to clot, with the desired score being between 2 and 3. Lower than 2 means increased risk of clots, but higher than 3 means increased risk of bleeds. 

Earlier when the other issue was going on, her scores kept going back and forth. They were always out of range, but changing sides.

More recently, they settled on high, and getting higher. 

You want to avoid clots to avoid a stroke, but apparently bleeding can lead to a stroke too. The hospice nurse suggested quitting the anticoagulant and I agreed.

One of my sisters asked if we were just going to let her have a stroke then. Well, no, that wasn't it exactly. It didn't feel good.

Finally, after one of her falls (which are still not frequent, but they are more frequent), her pain was not going down. She had been on Tylenol for arthritis, but we recently added a small dose of morphine.

She is doing pretty well on that, but things were starting to feel a little dramatic. 

As we were admitting her, they said they could end up discharging her if she stabilized; that may have helped it just feel like a tool. It still brought changes. The focus is on making life comfortable, not prolonging it. That sounds reasonable, but then different medications aren't covered, and there is no more trying to diagnose... it is all logical but may not feel good.

Eventually, it was trying to explain the INR issue to my sisters that shifted my perspective. It's not about whether or not she has a stroke. Up until last month, we were able to use medication to keep her in a good range. The medication no longer doing that is the cause of her no longer taking it, not the result, but it's one more thing we don't control.

There has been the cognitive decline all along, but her physical health had remained stable. It's not anymore. That's why it feels so different.

One thing that kept us thinking we were in for the long haul was that not only was Mom physically pretty strong, but she had siblings who lived into their 90s. They were also mentally sharp. 

Okay, let's look at the family members who had dementia. 

Our mother has outlived her mother by eight years already. She is at the age when her sister died.

I am not exactly thinking it will be any day now, but I do not think she will be discharged.

That's part of why we are not planning any long or far away trips. Yes, money issues make that sensible, but it's not the only thing.

That is still not the new grief coming up. Grief over losing Mom has been present for some time, in multiple layers. There is something else too.

Related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/06/7-or-so-calls-to-get-to-know-my-life.html